


Winning Is Everything

by AndreaLyn



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't Danny's idea of a great anniversary date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winning Is Everything

It’s been five hours since Danny’s said a peep to Steve.

“Come on,” Steve coaxes. 

Nothing.

“She’s pretty happy over there, Danny. I know you want to rip my guts out, but shouldn’t Grace’s happiness factor into this? You wanted a unique way to spend time together and I found one! You have to admit, she’s pretty good at it, too.”

Danny’s not ready to say anything, but he is ready to level Steve with a glare that could raze mountains down. He gesticulates wildly out in their surroundings, but not too far because he might get clipped and one of his best t-shirts will get ruined by the fact that Steve McGarrett apparently thinks that a good way to spend family time together is to take their daughter – their twelve-year-old daughter – to play paintball with other maniacs that share McGarrett’s brain issues.

“This is not the anniversary I had in mind,” Danny wants it made clear. He wants it written on billboards. He wants a skywriter to dazzle the blue skies of Hawaii with that message. He knows that Grace is having fun, but the trouble is that it’s hard to reconcile that with the murderous rage keening through his system. “Monkey! Remember!”

“Serpentine!” she shouts back to him. 

“See?” Steve pipes up. “Valuable life lessons.”

Danny glares at him with the look of a man who’s going to be withholding sex for the foreseeable future. “When does this end?”

“What?”

“This game! When does it end!”

“We get to go home when there’s only one person left,” Steve says, looking at Danny like he’s grown a second head. “Danno, I’ve explained this to you a dozen times. Why don’t you ever listen to me when I talk about paintball, it’s a perfectly...”

Danny reaches over and grabs Steve by the collar. “You’re going to use all those Navy SEAL skills of yours to help me flank my daughter and win this game for her,” he growls. “If we’re going to be stuck doing this, then she’s walking out of here on top. You don’t shoot her enemies, you lay suppressing fire and you let her do the dirty work. Got that, Lieutenant Commander?” Danny takes a deep breath and starts to work his way through the course, only feeling slightly bad that he’s managing to assault young people who have no business being shot almost in the face, but he will do anything for his daughter and he’s managing to get out his aggravation about Steve in the meantime.

Win-fucking-win. 

Eventually, Danny gets hit. He stares down at the green splattered over his best blue dress-shirt. “Steven,” he warns, eyeing his partner. 

“I got this, Danno,” Steve promises, one hand on Grace’s back as he guides her to a safe space. Danny, out of this game, sighs and heads back to the waiting area where a congregation of mothers, siblings, and significant others are waiting like it’s some strange version of limbo he’s been banished to.

One of the mothers catches sight of him and smiles sympathetically. “Is your kid still out there?”

“I have two of them,” he promises. “My daughter and my husband.”

The woman squeezes his shoulder sympathetically. “Don’t worry. Mine are both out there too.”

Two hours later -- _two hours later_ \-- Steve and Grace finally wander off the course. Steve is riddled in paint bullets from head to toe, but Grace? She doesn’t have a mark on her. It’s for the best because she sprints for Danny and wraps her arms around his torso. “Danno!” she exclaims. “I won!”

Danny looks over her head at Steve, raising a brow as he awaits the longer explanation. “She was amazing.”

“And you, what, rolled in all the paint because you felt like it?” Danny asks, gesturing to him. “You’re not riding in the car. You’re gonna have to get strapped down to the roof if you expect to get home.”

“It’s okay, Danno, he can take all the clothes off,” Grace says, smiling innocently as if she doesn’t actually know the wicked intent behind her words. That might have passed five years ago, but his daughter is too old and too sneaky for her to get away with that now. “I don’t mind.”

“Fine,” Danny sighs. “Steve, you go strip down and Grace, go get your prize.”

When Grace is gone, Steve lingers. 

“No,” Danny says, when he realizes what’s coming next.

“Yes,” says Steve. 

“No, no, no!” 

It’s not enough. Steve closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around Danny to embrace him tightly and the paint is definitely still fresh enough that now Danny’s shirt, pants, and skin is tinted with all the colors of the rainbow. “I hate you,” Danny protests, his mouth muffled against Steve’s shoulder where the purple paint is residing. “I hate you so much and you’re scarring Grace by forcing her to see so much of her parents’ skin.”

“We’re sharing an experience. That’s what couples do on their anniversary.”

“Murder-suicide is an experience,” Danny warns. 

“Not around the nice people, Danno,” Steve says, easing back and surveying the damage he’s done. “Look at that, it’s like art.”

Danny sighs and stares down at the mess Steve’s made of his clothes. “I really hope part of that prize is a promise that we never, ever come back here.” He looks over to Steve, who looks so resolutely determined to avoid Danny’s gaze that something is up. “...Steven.”

“We have to come back, Danny. Grace has to defend her title next year.”

Of course she does.

Danny sighs and digs his keys out of his pocket. “Remind me why I do this?”

“Because,” Steve says, like it’s the simplest answer in the world. “You love us.”

Yeah. He kind of does, doesn’t he?

“Alright,” Danny grumbles. “You win.”

And for a loser, Danny thinks he’s pretty damn lucky and is having a pretty good day and life of it. So, hey, so maybe he loses every now and again to Steve’s whim and to Grace’s enthusiasm. It’s worth it.


End file.
